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Today I'm going to take you through the Quasi-Vivo® QV500 SK starter kit from Kirkstall.
The kit shown here is a typical starter kit, however we can tailor kits to suit users individual needs
Over here, attached to the peristaltic pump is an assembled Quasi Vivo system, and is
an example of how you may connect the components of the starter kit together.
Our starter kit contains 3 Quasi Vivo QV500 chambers, one reservoir bottle, 2 packs of
tubing of different diameters, 4 packs of luer locks; male and female luer locks for each of the tubing sizes,
one filter, a box of glass coverslips, 3 loading trays and a Quasi Vivo User Guide.
I will start the pump and demonstrate the assembled Quasi Vivo System while I point out features.
The reservoir bottle contains the systems source of stored media. The reservoir bottle
has 3 ports at the top: 1 inlet, 1 outlet and 1 port for an air filter which ensures
there is no pressure build up.
Two pieces of tubing are attached using the luer locks, and it helps if you maintain a
male to female luer pattern throughout the System. This helps in connecting without the
need to swap luers over and is also useful if you want to add in further or different
Quasi Vivo chambers or components.
The piece of tubing I did not mention is the manifold tubing. This is the tubing that spans
the pump rollers and is the source of flow within the System. Manifold tubing is unique
to each individual pump manufacturer however we can also help source items like this for you
We include a box of glass coverslips to culture your cell on however our chambers do take
all different kinds of scaffolds; both home-made and commercially available scaffolds.
Other Quasi Vivo chambers are compatible with cell culture inserts such as Transwells.
You can see as the liquid flows through the Quasi Vivo System we have set up here, no
air bubbles are left in the chambers. This is due to their design.
The Quasi Vivo QV500 chamber is comprised of 2 componants: a lid and a base. Looking
down into the base you will see ridges. These ridges help in two simple ways- they allow
perfusion of media underneath a 3D scaffold and also help when removing the scaffold by
eliminating surface tension between the coverslip or scaffold and the base of the chamber.
The lid component houses both the inlet and outlet, and you may notice that they are at
slightly different heights. The lid is engineered to remove air bubbles out of the chambers
by a sloping inner roof.
The lid and the base push together and lock with a small twist. The lid and base have
been designed with preventing leakage in mind and incorporate several small hardly noticeable
features that have a big effect in preventing leakage. Leaks are a big problem you commonly
see with home-made flow systems. To date, I have never personally seen a QV500 chamber that leaks.
Thank you for watching, and if you have any questions about us or the Quasi-Vivo® System,
take a look at our website: www.kirkstall.org